Game Twelve: Brewers 4, Pirates 1

Box Score

On September 18, 2008 the Milwaukee Brewers were in full-fledged desperation mode. They fired Ned Yost a few days earlier and were on the brink of a horrible collapse. But on this day it looked as if the Brewers were on their way to a turnaround. They had the Cubs down to their final out, down four runs, and nobody was on base. Somehow, the Brewers lost this game. It was horrible.

The Brewers recovered, had magical week featuring three dramatic game-winning home runs, and made the playoffs. But that loss to the Cubs will stick with me forever. If you watched tonight's game, you'd understand why.

The Brewers were cruising along until the bottom of the 9th when John Axford came in to finish the game with a 4-0 lead. Two walks and a single later, the Pirates had the bases loaded with two outs. The game could be tied with one swing of the bat, or even worse, won with two swings. Fortunately the Axford was able to harness the power of facial hair and strike out Josh Rodriguez to end the game, but I was reminded too much of 9/18/2008 for my liking.

More thoughts on tonight:

-Offensively this was a boring game. Pitching-wise it was much better. I love watching soft-tossing lefties carve up opposing line-ups, and Randy Wolf did just that. 6.2 IP 3 H, and 10 Ks is not too shabby. I liked the Wolf signing when it happened, I liked if after last season, and I still like it now. He is a good pitcher.

-Nyjer Morgan is having a remarkable start to the season. Not so much in terms of re-inventing baseball, but every time he plays something interesting happens. Tonight is was an RBI double that would have been a triple if he didn't, you know, fall down rounding second. It was good to see him laughing afterwards. The video of his positive reaction should be used by little league coaches to illustrate how failure can be funny. That said, an additional run would have made us all feel more comfortable in the bottom of the 9th.

-Axford needs to start having clean innings. He has allowed a base runner to reach in every appearance; arecipe for disaster with a closers. Tonight he walked two batters with a 4-run lead; something that should not happen.

Next Up: a nice slate of contenders (The Phillies and Reds) and also-rans (The Nationals and Astros). This is a good chance for the Brewers to improve their record and show how good they really are.

Finally, since 2007 the Brewers are 46-17 versus Pittsburgh. Not bad at all.